Happy New Year
Not exactly the greatest New Year of modern times was it.
Pacific Rim, 150,000 dead, millions displaced, families destroyed. Yada yada yada, America, September 11th, 2001, thousands dead, families destroyed, yada, yada, yada. Bam, Christmas, 2004, Earthquake, thousands dead, yada yada yada. Hiroshima/Nagasaki, 1945, thousands dead, hundreds of thousands with radiation poisoning, yada yada yada. Vietnam, Agent Orange, yada yada yada. Cambodia, Burma, Rwanda, Somalia, Hurricane Ivan, Kursk, Every bloody mine in China. Whatever bloody African country we were supposed to be rescuing from famine before the tsunami came and we all forgot about it. (Sudan)
People will die in disasters, natural and man made, people will always die, but we have the technology to reduce the risk considerably. We have the intelligence to stop firing guns and bombs and God knows what else at each other. And yet all that we ever seem to spend money on is thinking up new ways to kill each other. There are natural disasters, from which none of us are immune, but if you live in the US or Europe, you actually have more than a chance in hell of surviving it if you're unlucky enough for there to be one while you're in the area. Not so the poor bastards in the pacific rim, who drowned, those in the Sudan, who starved, or those in Iran who got buried alive in the rubble of their own city.
When Mount Vesuvius destroyed the city of Pompeii, there was not a single Roman who could have predicted that disaster. Nowadays we have geological equipment, that while being an imperfect science, is better than nothing. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, especially large ones, tend to happen on a regular basis. The Pacific Tsunami needs to be a wake up call to people such as George W. Bush who seem unable to grasp the idea that the planet is a living changing environment. There will certainly be better protection now, for the countries that can afford it.
We live on a planet with six billion other human beings, many of whom face a daily struggle just to survive. However the 5000 or so people on this planet who actually hold any real power, simply look for ways to kill everyone who holds a grudge against them, and others want to kill everyone who doesn't happen to believe in the same religion. And then everyone needs land, water, food, fuel, and there's only so much to go around.
Wake up call people, with six billion people on this planet, you ain't never gonna kill everyone you disagree with, and you ain't never ever gonna get everyone to agree with you. It's absolutely incredible by itself that we only have six major religions.
This planet has the resources to look after us all, and our science is fast coming to a point where we can look after our ecosystems well, allowing them to return to a healthier state and provide more resources. And yet we fight, and put our money into guns and armies. We westerners are too greedy. We care about our bellies and our purses, and when we see images of dead black people we go how terrible and send a bit of loose change. You might disagree, the west has sent an awful lot of aid to the pacific this time, but an awful lot of westerners were killed. Look at the comparable damage of the Bam earthquake this time last year, and ask how much was given.
We have technology that can protect people from natural disasters. The US sees several Hurricanes, Tornados and Cyclones a year, yet very few people are killed, compare that with Haiti, which was devastated in Hurricane Ivan. What's more, any decent climatologist could have predicted what would happen. The weather kills thousands of people in Asia each year. We have technology that can reduce that number.
We care so much while it is on our tv screens but we are not just responsible for helping the survivors of a terrible disaster, we are responsible for our entire race. I hate to sound like John Lennon but for goodness's sake, every time an African dies of Aids when we have drugs that could have prevented it, we are responsible, every time a Bangladeshi is swept out to sea in a flash flood, we are responsible, every time an Iraqi civilian is shot dead by a loose American bullet, we are responsible, every time an Israeli dies at the hands of a Palestinian or a Palestinian at the hands of an Israeli, we are responsible, when the bomb fell on thousands of Japanese civilians, we were responsible, anywhere where there are people suffering, whether from natural causes or human greed in aggression and oppression then we are responsible.
We cannot prevent Earthquakes or Tsunami, We cannot cure Aids among other things, Wherever humanity is, greed, aggression and oppression will be there, but it is our responsibility as simple human beings to care enough to change the way in which we live, and by this I mean the way in which countries exist and the way in which governments act. Capitalism, the pursuit of money for its own sake, cannot be justified as the basis for the existence of a country and as the way of life for its citizens.
Mutual distrust between countries must be put aside in the wake of wider responsibility, it happened between Greece and Turkey after the latter's earthquake last year, and now in the same vein between Pakistan and India.
This is not an answer, but it is a beginning. We each have one life, and you may forget responsibility for your fellow man, wherever he may be, but to do so is to damn your own children, because the children of your fellow man, will remember that you forgot.
Happy New Year 2005 to the 150 000+ people who didn't live to see that day.
Everyone else be thankful that you did.
Pacific Rim, 150,000 dead, millions displaced, families destroyed. Yada yada yada, America, September 11th, 2001, thousands dead, families destroyed, yada, yada, yada. Bam, Christmas, 2004, Earthquake, thousands dead, yada yada yada. Hiroshima/Nagasaki, 1945, thousands dead, hundreds of thousands with radiation poisoning, yada yada yada. Vietnam, Agent Orange, yada yada yada. Cambodia, Burma, Rwanda, Somalia, Hurricane Ivan, Kursk, Every bloody mine in China. Whatever bloody African country we were supposed to be rescuing from famine before the tsunami came and we all forgot about it. (Sudan)
People will die in disasters, natural and man made, people will always die, but we have the technology to reduce the risk considerably. We have the intelligence to stop firing guns and bombs and God knows what else at each other. And yet all that we ever seem to spend money on is thinking up new ways to kill each other. There are natural disasters, from which none of us are immune, but if you live in the US or Europe, you actually have more than a chance in hell of surviving it if you're unlucky enough for there to be one while you're in the area. Not so the poor bastards in the pacific rim, who drowned, those in the Sudan, who starved, or those in Iran who got buried alive in the rubble of their own city.
When Mount Vesuvius destroyed the city of Pompeii, there was not a single Roman who could have predicted that disaster. Nowadays we have geological equipment, that while being an imperfect science, is better than nothing. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, especially large ones, tend to happen on a regular basis. The Pacific Tsunami needs to be a wake up call to people such as George W. Bush who seem unable to grasp the idea that the planet is a living changing environment. There will certainly be better protection now, for the countries that can afford it.
We live on a planet with six billion other human beings, many of whom face a daily struggle just to survive. However the 5000 or so people on this planet who actually hold any real power, simply look for ways to kill everyone who holds a grudge against them, and others want to kill everyone who doesn't happen to believe in the same religion. And then everyone needs land, water, food, fuel, and there's only so much to go around.
Wake up call people, with six billion people on this planet, you ain't never gonna kill everyone you disagree with, and you ain't never ever gonna get everyone to agree with you. It's absolutely incredible by itself that we only have six major religions.
This planet has the resources to look after us all, and our science is fast coming to a point where we can look after our ecosystems well, allowing them to return to a healthier state and provide more resources. And yet we fight, and put our money into guns and armies. We westerners are too greedy. We care about our bellies and our purses, and when we see images of dead black people we go how terrible and send a bit of loose change. You might disagree, the west has sent an awful lot of aid to the pacific this time, but an awful lot of westerners were killed. Look at the comparable damage of the Bam earthquake this time last year, and ask how much was given.
We have technology that can protect people from natural disasters. The US sees several Hurricanes, Tornados and Cyclones a year, yet very few people are killed, compare that with Haiti, which was devastated in Hurricane Ivan. What's more, any decent climatologist could have predicted what would happen. The weather kills thousands of people in Asia each year. We have technology that can reduce that number.
We care so much while it is on our tv screens but we are not just responsible for helping the survivors of a terrible disaster, we are responsible for our entire race. I hate to sound like John Lennon but for goodness's sake, every time an African dies of Aids when we have drugs that could have prevented it, we are responsible, every time a Bangladeshi is swept out to sea in a flash flood, we are responsible, every time an Iraqi civilian is shot dead by a loose American bullet, we are responsible, every time an Israeli dies at the hands of a Palestinian or a Palestinian at the hands of an Israeli, we are responsible, when the bomb fell on thousands of Japanese civilians, we were responsible, anywhere where there are people suffering, whether from natural causes or human greed in aggression and oppression then we are responsible.
We cannot prevent Earthquakes or Tsunami, We cannot cure Aids among other things, Wherever humanity is, greed, aggression and oppression will be there, but it is our responsibility as simple human beings to care enough to change the way in which we live, and by this I mean the way in which countries exist and the way in which governments act. Capitalism, the pursuit of money for its own sake, cannot be justified as the basis for the existence of a country and as the way of life for its citizens.
Mutual distrust between countries must be put aside in the wake of wider responsibility, it happened between Greece and Turkey after the latter's earthquake last year, and now in the same vein between Pakistan and India.
This is not an answer, but it is a beginning. We each have one life, and you may forget responsibility for your fellow man, wherever he may be, but to do so is to damn your own children, because the children of your fellow man, will remember that you forgot.
Happy New Year 2005 to the 150 000+ people who didn't live to see that day.
Everyone else be thankful that you did.
posted by Caractacus at 01:46
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